Avaya is a leading provider of solutions that enable customer and team engagement across multiple channels and devices for better customer experience, increased productivity and enhanced financial performance. Its world-class contact center and unified communications technologies and services are available in a wide variety of flexible on-premise and cloud deployment options that seamlessly integrate with non-Avaya applications. The Avaya Engagement Environment enables third parties to create and customize business applications for competitive advantage. Avaya’s fabric-based networking solutions help simplify and accelerate the deployment of business critical applications and services. For more information, please visit www.avaya.com.

Sneak Peek of Avaya at Dreamforce: Convergence of AI, IoT, Blockchain

At Avaya, we have always been industry leaders in innovation. The digital transformation age has only provided more opportunity for our team to grow and continue to innovate, in entirely new and exciting ways. One of the ways we have been able to do this is by forming strong partnerships with other industry leaders, such as Avaya’s recently announced significant partnership with Salesforce, which we will be supporting and showcasing at this year’s Dreamforce event.

As part of Dreamforce, I have the privilege of taking the stage on behalf of Avaya as one of Salesforce’s premier partners to evaluate the role that Digital Technology is playing today, and the role it is poised to play tomorrow, in areas such as data security, self-service, facial recognition, digital identity, and fraud protection. A future of automation and contextually relevant insights is here—and it’s being shaped by technologies such as AI, IoT, sophisticated, pervasive and real-time analytics, and Blockchain architectures. These technologies will create massive business opportunities while dramatically evolving the future of customer and citizen experiences.

As part of my session, I will discuss use cases in market today, as well as future use cases, which exemplify the convergence of these disruptive technologies. A fascinating topic and one I am incredibly passionate and excited about. I couldn’t wait to take the stage to share these insights, so I will give you a taste of my Dreamforce session and show you a day-in-the-life example of how AI, IoT and Blockchain technologies are rapidly converging and providing tremendous value to both businesses and consumers.

The Roles of AI, IoT, Blockchain

In a world where we are constantly looking to deliver better experiences while driving higher levels of efficiencies for businesses, automation reigns supreme. With that in mind, it’s little wonder that AI (Artificial Intelligence)—with its ability to learn, adapt and personalize automatically—has become one of the latest, greatest buzzwords in technology.

The IoT (Internet of Things) is a buzzword that’s lost a bit of buzz. For the most part, consumers and business now understand and even expect the role it plays in connecting and streamlining our everyday business and consumer devices. As this expectation of connectivity grows, discussions have ramped up around the role IoT will continue to play in bringing real-time analytics outputs to automated frameworks (which AI is part of) and its ability to trigger sophisticated workflows to personalize and customize experiences.

So, we understand and appreciate the role these two important technologies play in increasing efficiencies and personalization in business and everyday life—but what about Blockchain?

With growth in connected, automated, personalized services, our needs around storing and accessing increased volumes of personal information have also grown. And with that growth, come requirements for much stronger security architecture with centralized models. Blockchain, a distributed architecture using cryptography and a concept of “write a record once,” provides enormous value to some of the use cases required as part of digital transformations.

When we combine AI, IoT and Blockchain, we get a very powerful solution. I see these being jointly implemented a lot more in the near future. Here’s how these technologies may all come together in your life….

Dreamforce Preview: Use Case Shows Converging AI, IoT, Blockchain

Imagine you’re going on a business trip in the next few weeks to Europe and you’re looking for the best airfare and hotel. You can easily use various web tools, or you can use a personal assistant, to help you find the best options available to you at the best price.

A few days after researching multiple options, you receive notification on your smart watch of a great deal, so you accept it. Rather than using a typical credit card to secure the deal, you use your company’s bitcoins (digital currency) to make the reservation.

A week later, as you are getting ready to board the plane, an announcement comes over the PA system. Unfortunately your flight has been delayed due to mechanical problems, and the delay will cause you to miss your connecting flight. Frustrated at this, you tweet about your experience. The airline has an AI solution that monitors social media and automatically reaches out to you via SMS, quickly connecting you with an agent.

(Take a moment to consider that as a customer of the airline, you have now gone through at least four or five channels to connect to their service before even boarding the flight. Easy to see the importance of a strong ominchannel strategy when you consider this.)

The AI platform that interacted with you via Twitter has also leveraged sentiment analysis to detect the tone of your tweet and determine you are very unhappy with your experience. The system then leverages another omnichannel connection to relay this contextual information to the agent who is assisting you.

Understanding the context of your situation and your frustrations, the airline provides you an upgrade to first class for your connecting flight. It also notifies the hotel connected to your booking of your delayed arrival, which has your digital identity (facial) stored in your profile, all secured/encrypted through the Blockchain architecture implemented by both the hotel and the airline.

As you arrive at the hotel, facial recognition analytics (via video surveillance) recognizes you walking into the hotel lobby and immediately notifies the manager on duty to welcome you and provide you with a suite upgrade.

This is just one example where AI, IoT, digital currency, and identity management using Blockchain all come together to transform the customer experience and build stronger loyalty.

Above all else, what this example shows is how much the world of customer service has changed. Where it used to be human-to-human as a first interaction, now more often, it is a human-to-machine/AI interaction that occurs well before you or someone in your business personally becomes involved.

Customers use multiple channels to connect to your services—and more importantly to talkabout your product or service. You can’t be everywhere—but you can make it seem like you are by leveraging these technologies. Use technology to strengthen your omnichannel strategy and ultimately your overall customer experience, and gain a competitive advantage in an increasingly technologically integrated world.

Share

Related Articles:

Using AI in Contact Centers to Create Better Customer Engagement

I’ve been through quite a few technology trends in my career, and to say Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the hottest may be an understatement. If you have customers that are 55 and under you need a customer experience plan to address digital channel preferences and AI in contact centers now, before it’s too late.

Avaya recently announced Avaya Ava™, our cloud AI solution that supports your customers who use social media, chat and messaging channels to engage with you. To address the communication preferences of your customers, Ava interacts with social and messaging platforms by automating digital interactions through chat bot and Natural Language Processing (NLP) with sentiment analysis—in 34 languages! And Ava provides seamless hand off of the customer experience, with full context of the interaction, to an agent when and if one is required.

Why the Time for Avaya Ava is Now

To put things in perspective, if you do a quick search you can find that there are over five billion mobile device users globally, sending 22 billion text messages and over 60 billion social network messages per day. This makes it no surprise that Dimension Data found the 55 and under crowd prefers to engage with organizations through digital channels like social media, mobile applications and web chat. In fact, I’m often hearing stories about someone’s parent or grandparent over 55 who prefers to text rather than talk.

The real question is how do you serve your customers who are living on those mobile devices? The answer: Start with AI.

But why is AI so hot? Why start there? Because it eliminates the need for human interaction by adding intelligent automation? Or maybe it’s the ability to reduce siloed experiences? These are definitely true, but only part of the equation. AI is such a big deal because it also has significant potential to help drive revenue, reduce costs and increase CSAT. Everybody wins! And that is why you see market research predicting a CAGR of nearly 60% in the global AI market by 2025.

AI is Not All the Same—What You Should Look For

With all of the excitement around AI, it’s no doubt there’s a bit of “bandwagon jumping” going on. Imagine that I am a new customer of a large insurance company, and I tweet about frustrations with recent billing issues I am having. This could go one of two ways: Good or BAD.

Let’s say that this insurance company has a bot and social mining that recognized me as a frustrated customer. After an initial exchange with the bot it was determined that a live agent was needed, so after a lengthy hold, a voice connection is established with the agent. But the agent has no context explaining who I am and why we have been connected. How do you think this ends? Likely with a great opportunity for the competition.

Now, let’s look at how this scenario but be improved with a truly intelligent AI solution—one like Avaya Ava. My tweet and frustration sentiment is detected by the AI application and I am recognized as a relatively new customer, so it is known that I am in a critical phase for retention. I receive a response from the company’s bot, who understands who I am. We engage in a “conversation” to gather some additional details and validations for security purposes. Since it is determined that I already have a relationship with Jeff, the representative who set my account up, the bot sends me a link that connects me directly to Jeff. Jeff has all my information—the complete context of my interaction—and my billing issue is resolved in a matter of minutes. Happy customer! Retained customer!

This not-uncommon scenario highlights the need for a truly valuable AI solution—one that has the potential of delivering the business results you need—to meet a set of core capabilities:

Sentiment Analysis to assess emotion or attitude of a customer, either positive or negative, and assign a qualitative score to guide proper treatment

Chat bot for real-time automated services leveraging the aforementioned capabilities to be effective

What You Need to Know About Contact Center Automation

So, if you implement an AI solution with all of these capabilities you can completely automate your contact center, right? Well, not quite–at least not yet. Rather, you should look at AI to “humanize” the automated customer experience. Having a machine (bot) interact with me and understand my intent is leaps and bounds a better experience than what an IVR can offer, but the live agent experience is still paramount.

An AI solution should be fully integrated into the rest of your customer experience solution as part of the complete customer journey–one that allows the full context of an interaction to be visible to a live agent. This way, the agent becomes an extension of the automated experience, and in turn creates improved CSAT. And because the automated experience is always available with real-time and intelligent responses, you will be better aligned to your customers’ engagement preferences. This in turn will help drive down cost with increased self service and accelerate revenue opportunities due to a more personalized and “intelligent” experience.

We generated a lot of buzz about AI when we introduced Ava at our partner and customer conference last month. People are seeing the potential to build enviable customer experiences by better connecting with customers through social and messaging channels and by journey mapping customer interactions.

10 Key CX Predictions for Success in 2018

New year. New goals. New CX Predictions. 40% of executives recently polled by Avaya rate their company’s customer experience as “poor” or “average,” and 93% say they’ll be focusing on improving customer experience in 2018. But how do they know where to start? To gain a better understanding, we must take a look at the past.

Eighteen months ago, we weren’t seeing interactive devices in our homes that responded to our every request (i.e. music, movie times, shopping lists, news, and general information). This provides a tremendous capability beyond what we had even on our mobile devices, and it indicates something very important to watchful businesses: technology becomes real when it gets in the hands of the consumer.

This reminds me of a piece I once wrote about Tool vs. Toy, which explores the changing value of technology driven by users vs. investors. With that in mind, we analyzed key information—polled by our own teams of experts—and have emerged with 10 CX predictions companies can’t afford to ignore…

Artificial Intelligence begins to take hold in CX…in the most basic ways. It doesn’t have to be big to be valuable! Think about the simple impact of chatting with natural language interaction. AI technologies like Siri, Google, Alexa and Bixby are all taking shape with different customer experience strategies. For example, Alexa (Lexbot) engages in continuous listening and data collection to endlessly refine and improve the user experience. Looking at the big picture, this data will be used to shape the way Amazon evolves its digital engagement efficiency. Other spoken bots will need to learn from this approach, and all platforms will need to unify chat and spoken AI to deliver more compelling and valuable customer experience.

Overall, AI will allow more brands to focus on context and anticipatory engagement at the individual level to hone in on the customer segment of one. The goal will be to intuitively understand the nuances of each individual consumer as they inevitably change to deliver deeper levels of personalization.

Connecting your digital experience is here and now.

The simple blocking and tackling of connecting your Digital Experience with the rest of your customer service capabilities must still occur. If you don’t, you face the real and inevitable risk of falling behind (side note: too many companies are spending time catching up to where consumers already are). Yet, it’s important to note that brands are tackling different things than before. For instance, many will now skip things like email and go straight to bots (where AI and digital meet).

The bottom line: Companies will need to begin the digital experience in the expected ways consumers dictate.Keeping up with these expectations requires an environment in which customer data can be seamlessly gathered and provided across teams, processes and touchpoints.

IoT starts with the mobile app.
Many brands will “ignore” IoT because they don’t have tech embedded on a “device” of sorts (like in a car or a refrigerator). Think smaller in 2018…specifically, mobile apps. These apps are essentially IoT in the pocket or purse of every consumer today. Start visualizing every consumer’s phone as an IoT device and your mobile app as the key to tapping into it.

Consider the Apple Watch. At a glance, it’s a wearable that consumers purchase to unlock a suite of cool new features. Yet in reality, Apple was revolutionizing industries and changing lives. For example, the brand was allowing healthcare providers to put a device on patients’ wrists with a FDA-approved EKG. It was allowing hotels to deliver better value to guests with built-in room keys. We also see this with the Verizon mobile app, which functions as a sales app when used on the carrier’s Wi-Fi (in store, for example) and as a service app when not. This is just a taste of this “app evolution” and how it will change the game as apps become more IoT-defined.

The bottom line: Once a technology is in the consumer space, users will naturally innovate on top of it to figure out how it can be best used to improve their lives and/or industry.

The race for (the right) customer engagement solution will intensify
Our research shows that 96% of organizational spend in 2018 is earmarked for tech solutions, specifically related to engagement. Demand for customer engagement platforms will peak in 2018, forcing executives to comb through countless vendor solutions. Take a short cut by making sure the solutions you are considering provide the appropriate flexibility for future growth, and simplicity to implement even complex scenarios quickly.

In other words, buy systems that provide you with broad options—not just point solutions.

This means systems that go far beyond traditional contact center and UC; technology that reimagines communications and redefines business value as we know it. For example, communication-enablement for contextual engagement (using an open SDK to embed real-time communications like voice, video and chat directly into client-facing apps and to create an optimal agent experience). Or, flexible application integration using an open architecture platform (being able to integrate apps that are either ready-made from a trusted provider or existing within an App Store).

The rise (and simplification) of customer journey mapping
Our data shows that 70% of companies believe improving customer experience requires mapping out ‘desired state’ customer journeys. As a result, 60% of large enterprises in 2018 are expected to perform customer journey mapping to gain a contextual view of the end-to-end experience. The question we have is: how can this be made simpler?

Customer journey mapping is still a sensitive spot for most as only 1/3 of companies believe their data and analytics are differentiating. Everything is made simpler with a customer engagement platform built on open, extensible architecture.

This kind of platform allows you to flexibly gather, collect, process and analyze real-time and historical data across virtually every channel (IM, co-browsing, SMS, phone, email, IoT) and device (phone, mobile/tablets, branch, desktop, kiosks) to gain a rich visualization of the customer journey enterprise-wide. This puts to bed the significant challenge of delivering consistent, contextual experiences regardless of where and when they begin, end and continue (and no matter how many people consumers communicate with).

‘High tech, high touch’ without coordination will put companies on thin ice

Technology drives customer experience, but it won’t replace human interaction (consider industries like hospitality, where 93% of customers believe the value of personal service cannot be replaced). Therefore, a certain level of coordination will be needed in situations where human customer service becomes part of the digital experience.

For example, building a more flexible communications infrastructure that allows for real-time human interaction to maintain a personal service feel. Or, bringing skills-based routing to the help desk and contact center to optimize resources and strengthen customer relationships. In 2018, major players will be defined by their understanding of this delicate balance. Those who fail to keep up will operate on thin ice.

Security, Privacy and Accountability Pressures Spike

New technology for e-commerce and communications has long brought with it new ways for those intent on criminal behavior to breach systems. Increased focus on solutions that protect and secure customer data and interactions starts in the contact center.

Consider the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II (MiFID II), which became effective on January 3, 2018. This legislation requires the capture of all voice and non-voice communications intended to lead to execution of a financial trade. This applies to any firms who conduct business in the European Union (EU), creating global impact.

Meanwhile, the EU GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) becomes effective on May 25, 2018. If your business processes personal data in any way and operates in the EU, it will be affected by this new legislation.

Today, 75% of business apps lack key capabilities to ensure EU GDPR compliance. These new requirements will force companies to change the way they process, store, and protect customers’ personal data. In 2018, enterprises will need to evaluate their policies, procedures and operations to ensure compliance with these new consumer privacy, data security and data control rules—and they’ll turn to new contact center technology as their first line of defense.

Customers demand connections with purpose
There are endless ways in which customers can now connect with brands, yet each connection should serve a purpose greater than itself. Companies need to see the close-up and the big picture of how they’re positioning their brand. This is what makes customer experience an actual experience.

For example, instead of simply routing customers to agents based on KPIs, they can build customized learning algorithms that match customers with agents based on next-level variables like personality, emotion and relatability. Instead of only driving inbound experiences, they should offer proactive, intelligent communications across the end-to-end customer journey. Instead of just ‘serving customers,’ organizations should be working towards a higher purpose and defined experience vision.

Blockchain becomes more than just technology
Any company that handles transaction records should be eyeing blockchain if they’re not already. The technology is ideal for continually growing a list of financial records without exposing any confidential information. Yet blockchain has also grown to offer immense opportunity for customer experience.

For example, real-time blockchain technology can be used to measure the customer experience of multiple departments. Companies can leverage blockchain to securely gather sentiment information across multiple sources—call centers, email, social media—to identify key trends and customer insights. In this way, blockchain has evolved from a security technology to a strategic weapon for business growth and competitiveness.

Employee experience will legitimize with consumerization of work
Employee disengagement has become nothing short of an epidemic. Companies must strategize long-term around employee experience to improve not only customer experience, but costs and operational efficiency (companies can capture an additional $13k to $26k of productivity per employee per year with better engagement).

This calls for the consumerization of work, in which companies look beyond IT and devices towards workflow, behavior and rising expectations that mimic personalized, real-world apps like Snapchat and Instagram. 2018 will continue a massive shift in which enterprise software embodies consumer apps and, ultimately, reshapes the role of IT and the processes it manages.

In the end, our CX predictions are that 2018 will be about seamlessly delivering a breadth of capabilities in an ever-complex digital space, with a simple brand consumption approach that aligns with costs and customer value. No one said it would be easy, but we’re here to help.

You can hear more about these predictions by listening to our Get Smart session where I am joined by Val Matula, our lead for innovations applications, and Tim Gogal who leads Digital Transformation consulting team where we review these predictions more in-depth.

As your organization prepares for 2018, Avaya can help you gauge customer experience readiness and implement award-winning solutions that complement your budget and existing business ecosystem. In the end, our goal simply is to help you with experience, expertise and solutions you can count on. We know you can make 2018 your organization’s best year yet.

Share

Five Things You Must Do to Shift Customer Experience in 2018

We all know that to drive competitiveness, you must shift customer experience—and that this is now more important than ever. But shift to what? How? When? I hear these questions all the time when meeting with customers in our Executive Briefing Centers, and at tradeshows and conferences. The industry is rallying around terms like “omnichannel,” “cloud,” and “analytics,” but the contact center is not a one-size-fits-all entity. You can’t instantly accomplish a great shift for your business simply by buying omnichannel for your contact center. Rather, it’s a delicate process that requires you to refresh and integrate systems together.

How to Shift Customer Experience

As executives and leaders in customer experience, we must be ready to make changes that can shift a contact center to deliver a better customer experience. Here are five things that Avaya recommends you do in 2018. These may seem obvious, but collectively they can yield true lifetime value results from customers:

Understand Your Customer Journeys
Rather than looking at countless different, individual interactions, choose to put your customer on a journey, one that rarely starts and stops with just one contact. Take an outside-in view by identifying several important customer journeys and customer preferences. Or, consider low CX scores that can be improved either through self-service assistance or by linking channels together with context (this helps to understand where the customer has been before).

Listen to Your Feet on the StreetWhile your customers’ feedback is essential, it is your frontline staff who will give you direct pointers. These individuals understand the necessary tools and training for reaching new levels of customer experience. Consider, for example, that 84% of global contact centers are adapting to meet the needs of next-gen millennial workers. Give your agents a sense of ownership and they will tell you where they can personalize and engage with customers on a greater level. Your agents could potentially sell more when they’re able to make customers feel great about their overall experience. The key is to arm agents with the right information on their desktops.

Support Advanced Automation and AnalyticsAccording to Gartner, more than 50% of CIOs will have artificial intelligence as one of their top five investment priorities by 2020. AI will assist greatly in understanding the customer journey: augmented reality and bots can automate more processes over human-to-human interactions. Keep in mind, however, that humans are still needed. It’s just that advanced automation and analytics, when put in the right place, can lead to richer and more effective experiences between customers and representatives.

Break Internal SilosCreating an orchestrated experience requires executives to look as a team at organizational processes. Take charge as the person who identifies and leads change across your entire organization. Departments working in silos—sales, marketing, service—all stop short when processes are not stitched together. Also keep in mind that your CRM systems and contact center processes must complement one another. They need to come together to drive better customer and business outcomes.

Bridge The GapsNow comes the fun stuff: ownership, budget and getting a project underway. This can be done either by way of proof of concept, or segmenting a certain group of interactions to begin changing processes. Take note of the before and after, and check-in with your customers on improvements (consider surveys or one-to-one outreach). Assess if there are new roles or skillsets needed to keep up with the change. Take it one step at a time and prove a return on investment against identified use cases before moving on.

You need to make a shift happen in 2018 to continually innovate customer experience and improve lifetime value. It will require some research and a few bold moves. I promise it will be a rewarding process if it is inclusive of input and bridges critical gaps.

So, where do you start? I encourage you to talk to Avaya about an assessment or visit one of our Executive Briefing Center sites. From initial strategizing to execution, Avaya can help you develop a solid customer experience plan that yields true lifetime value—we can even model a potential ROI or CLV based on your own estimates. Contact Avaya to learn more.

Avaya is a leading provider of solutions that enable customer and team engagement across multiple channels and devices for better customer experience, increased productivity and enhanced financial performance. Its world-class contact center and unified communications technologies and services are available in a wide variety of flexible on-premise and cloud deployment options that seamlessly integrate with non-Avaya applications. The Avaya Engagement Environment enables third parties to create and customize business applications for competitive advantage. Avaya’s fabric-based networking solutions help simplify and accelerate the deployment of business critical applications and services. For more information, please visit www.avaya.com.